Novel Quotes
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Information, defined intuitively and informally, might be something like 'uncertainty's antidote.' This turns out also to be the formal definition- the amount of information comes from the amount by which something reduces uncertainty...The higher the [information] entropy, the more information there is. It turns out to be a value capable of measuring a startling array of things- from the flip of a coin to a telephone call, to a Joyce novel, to a first date, to last words, to a Turing test...Entropy suggests that we gain the most insight on a question when we take it to the friend, colleague, or mentor of whose reaction and response we're least certain. And it suggests, perhaps, reversing the equation, that if we want to gain the most insight into a person, we should ask the question of qhose answer we're least certain... Pleasantries are low entropy, biased so far that they stop being an earnest inquiry and become ritual. Ritual has its virtues, of course, and I don't quibble with them in the slightest. But if we really want to start fathoming someone, we need to get them speaking in sentences we can't finish.
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I write all of my novels and stories, as you have seen, in a great surge of delightful passion. Only recently, glancing at the novel, I realized that Montag is named after a paper manufacturing company. And Faber, of course, is a maker of pencils! What a sly thing my subconscious was, to name them thus. And not tell me!
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I don't talk about my books while I'm writing them: not even my husband knows what a novel's about until it's done.
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Characters are the key to a good book. It took me several novels to comprehend that.
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It is the great triumph of genius to make the common appear novel.
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The only thing which can tell us about the novel is the novel.
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Great fiction shows us not how to conduct our behavior but how to feel. Eventually, it may show us how to face our feelings and face our actions and to have new inklings about what they mean. A good novel of any year can initiate us into our own new experience.
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If the masses are not thrown a few novels , they may react by throwing up a few barricades.
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In all my stories and novels, no one ever escapes Louisiana. Maybe that is because my soul never left Louisiana, although my body did go to California.
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People who wrote literary novels about the past probably didn't want them pegged as historical fiction. Certainly that was true in England.
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Somehow, you can achieve a directness in the novel that you can't get anywhere else.
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I've found that writing novels is an all-absorbing experience - both physical and mental - and I have to do it every day in order to keep the rhythm, to keep myself focused on what I'm doing.
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When I write a novel I put into play all the information inside me. It might be Japanese information or it might be Western; I don't draw a distinction between the two.
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...By far the most usual way of handling phenomena so novel that they would make for a serious rearrangement of our preconceptions is to ignore them altogether, or to abuse those who bear witness for them.
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Everyone has early fiction fantasies, but it wasn't until my second child Betsy was born that I allowed the urge to write a novel bubble up.
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We could live like counts. ... If all that money is out there, I might as well hack a little on the side and put the novel off.
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Put simply the novel stands between us and the hardening concept of statistical man. There is no other medium in which we can live for so long and so intimately with a character. That is the service a novel renders.
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Being in a Chinese coal mine for 30 years is like an epic novel. It's tragic.
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There are often references to childhood, but they're rarely the focus of the [my] novels.
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I can't imagine how American readers will react to a novel, but if the story is appealing it doesn't matter much if you don't catch all the detail. I'm not too familiar with the geography of nineteenth century London, for instance, but I still enjoy reading Dickens.
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I don’t want what we’re doing to just end up as notes for a novel.
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I think of my novels as entertainments.
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It's the pursuit of love and happiness that is the driving force of the romantic novel.
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What a joy it is to read a book that shocks one into remembering just how high one's literary standards should be.... a tour de force by one of England's best novelists.... Atonement is a spectacular book; as good a novel - and more satisfying... - than anything McEwan has written....sublimely written narrative.... The Dunkirk passage is a stupendous piece of writing, a set piece that could easily stand on its own.
